Logan MacGregor
Born: April 14, 1972
Logan was the first child of Sean and Moira MacGregor,
born just under a year after the two married. He had his mother's red hair
and his father's – and grandfather's – piercing blue eyes. He grew
up in Galway,
When Logan was 14, his parents had another child, a boy named Colin. Unfortunately it was a difficult pregnancy, and Moira did not survive, while the doctors called it a miracle that Colin made it.
Although Logan loved his brother, relations between himself and his father deteriorated in his mother's absence, and in 1988 Logan left home, never to see his family alive again. Colin would not remember his older brother, and Sean never mentioned the matter to him.
Logan made his way taking odd jobs, often on the wrong side of
the law, and eventually found his way to
He trained in a number of military skills, but he truly excelled at the sniper rifle, which he put to excellent use against a number of political targets from 1992-1998, before being shot and captured by the police. Logan nearly died from his wounds, but in the interests of a public trial, he was given the medical treatment that brought him back from the brink of death. This was his first experience with out of body projection, as he found himself looking down at his own sprawling and bleeding corpse.
He recovered, however, and stood trial for several assassinations
and a number of other less serious charges. Through legal maneuvering by Sinn
Fein and some under the table deals cut with sympathetic members of the justice
system, the case ended in a mistrial, and Logan was set free. There was a
catch, however – he was forbidden, by the IRA's political leaders, from resuming
his previous work. He was too high profile now. They provided him with a substantial
amount of cash and asked him to never be seen in
He understood the reasoning, and while grateful for his life, Logan still felt betrayed by his leadership. He had little choice if he wished to live, however. He himself was responsible for the deaths of at least half a dozen former IRA members who had not obeyed their orders to disappear.
It was the summer of 1998, and Logan passed through Galway before
beginning his exile, where he found that his father and baby brother had recently
emigrated to
Hurt by all that he had lost, Logan traveled to Atlanta to try and see his father. When he called Sean, however, he was told that if he ever tried to visit either his father or brother, Sean would call the police.
That night, Logan sat in a bar called the Vortex, in Little Five Points, and tried to drink away his troubles in a lonely corner. He hadn't realized that the joint was a biker bar until much later in the evening when he looked up at a brewing disturbance. Several bikers were arguing – over a woman, of course – who was trying to get away from all of them. Logan ignored them, and went back to his drink, but the woman ran past him and grabbed his arm, begging for his help.
The ex-terrorist would have ignored her, but the combination of alcohol, depression, and a healthy self-destructiveness combined to form a 'what the fuck' attitude and he stood up to block the woman's jealous suitors.
Three minutes, 11 unconscious bikers (six of whom would never wake up), and one broken nose later, Logan led the woman out through the back door and up the street. A number of other patrons were pouring out of the bar and looking for them, and the woman told Logan to follow her to her car. He declined, having had enough fun for one night, when the woman addressed him: "My apologies dúnta, but I needed to test you." Dúnta had been his code name within the IRA – literally 'closed', for being the one to close a number of loose ends.
When he asked how she knew that, she told him to get in the car and she would explain. The woman, whose name was Karen Anders, was a recruiter for Nextworld - a recently formed 'legitimate' company of mercenaries with very select skills. She thought that Logan might have those skills, but first she had needed to test his physical prowess, which he had demonstrated admirably.
Logan objected to being manipulated like this, but with no other options, he agreed to hear Karen out. He nearly told her to let him out when she told him there were such things as ghosts, but the appearance in the backseat of a man who quite clearly had his throat ripped out silenced his objections.
Logan had been raised a Catholic, and the thought of interfering with the dead held a certain innate revulsion to him, but he couldn't deny the advantages. He agreed to undergo NextWorld's test, which confirmed that he possessed the ability to project. They classified him as a Skimmer-Phantasm, and hired him. He continued the training he'd begun with the IRA, and improved his sniping skills. His employers were delighted to learn that Logan considered the M82 Barrett sniper rifle such an extension of himself that it carried through with him as an artifact when he projected.
For four years, Logan was happy with his life. He was highly skilled, appropriately respected and feared by those who knew of him, and well compensated for his talents. Then something happened that began to change everything.
The sniper knew that if his enemies made the connection between himself and his family, they would be in danger, but he couldn't bring himself to isolate from them entirely, and so kept an eye on what Sean and Colin were doing. When he learned that Sean had turned to the Yakuza for money, he called his father once again to offer help instead, but Sean hung up on him.
Then Colin disappeared, and Sean testified anyway. Through NextWorld's government sources, Logan learned that the FBI had lied to his father, saying they had Colin in custody. Logan knew this was a lie, and tried to find his brother with no success.
Colin's body was eventually found by the police, and Sean committed suicide almost immediately thereafter. Logan attended his brother and father's funeral mass at St. Joseph's, but he was unknown to any of his family's stateside acquaintances. His grandfather saw him, but the two did not speak. The only person Logan spoke to was a female cop with the APD, who came by to pay her respects to Filian and assure the man that they were doing everything they could to find Colin's murderer. Logan casually inquired as to whether there were any leads, posing as a 'friend of the family', and learned that a man named Ako Hariien was the primary suspect.
Unfortunately, the sniper was soon sent on an assignment to
Logan went to his father's house after returning to the states, where he encountered his father's spirit. Sean apologized for never reconciling with his elder son, and Logan swore he would find Colin's murderer. Sean's last request was for Logan to redeem himself, and the sniper vowed that he would try. With this promise exacted, Sean MacGregor's spirit released its tethers and moved on.
Since that encounter, in late December of 2002, Logan has been trying to find a way to distance himself from NextWorld so he can pursue his vengeance. Eventually, almost a year later, his superior's agreed to let him resign after one last job. Terrel & Squib, a nominal competitor, had actually hired NextWorld to 'remove' an employee they suspected of corporate espionage, one Kelly Michaels.
George Holtzclaw, Logan's longtime wisp partner, wended them both to an abandoned drive-in where Ms. Michaels was expected to meet with a set of Orpheus agents. The sniper quickly delivered the killing shot and George wended them back out before the Orpheus team knew what was happening.
The next day, Logan took his leave of NextWorld and began digging into a number of his contacts, trying to track down Ako Hariien. George kept him up to date on the gossip, however, and passed the word that something big was in the works. Noone knew exactly what was going down, but the wisp told Logan to keep his head down the week of the 15th of December and watch the news.
Logan was stunned on the morning of the 16th to learn that Orpheus, NextWorld, and T&S had all been virtually wiped out in overnight attacks, and the FBI was hunting anyone affiliated with the companies who might have survived. The sniper double checked that his own accounts were still carefully protected in various offshore banking interests before preparing to go into hiding.
Logan had been trying to stay true to the vow he made to his father to redeem his life, but this latest bout of violence seems to have convinced him of the dangers that can await beyond the veil. He plans to present himself as a supplicant and make a full confession before a priest, then seek redemption.
Of course, his idea of redemption is to use his talents as a skimmer and a sniper to mete out justice to those who deserve it…
